In this March 2, 2020, photo, Erika DuVal and her daughter Helena, 10, prepare to toss hay bales to cattle from the back of a truck at their farm in Tulelake, Calif. DuVal's husband, Ben DuVal, inherited the farm from his grandfather and worries that plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River could set a precedent for dam removal that could eventually threaten his livelihood. The proposal to remove the dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 4, 2020, photo, a mural depicting traditional fishing methods used by the Karuk tribe to harvest salmon brightens the side of a food market in Orleans, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. Numerous tribes in southern Oregon and northern California, including the Karuk, are pushing for the dams' removal to save dwindling salmon populations in California's second-largest river. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 5, 2020, photo, Hunter Maltz, a fish technician for the Yurok tribe, pushes a jet boat into the Klamath River at the confluence of the Klamath River and Blue Creek as Keith Parker, a Yurok tribal fisheries biologist, watches near Klamath, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. Numerous tribes in southern Oregon and northern California, including the Yurok, are pushing for the dams' removal to save dwindling salmon populations in California's second-largest river. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 2, 2020, photo, birds take off from a marsh in the Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge in the Klamath Basin along the Oregon-California border. The refuge is not far from four dams on the lower Klamath River that could soon be demolished in the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history. The proposal to remove the dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 3, 2020, photo, excess water spills over the top of a dam on the lower Klamath River known as Copco 1 near Hornbrook, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and would include the Copco 1 facility pictured. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 3, 2020, photo, Demian Ebert, the Klamath program manager for PacifiCorp, looks at a tank holding juvenile chinook salmon being raised at the Iron Gate Hatchery at the base of the Iron Gate Dam near Hornbrook, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 5, 2020, photo, Yurok tribal member Dave Severns carves a traditional Yurok canoe as his great-nephew, Darius Silva, plays inside the unfinished boat in Klamath, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. Numerous tribes in southern Oregon and northern California, including the Yurok, are pushing for the dams' removal to save dwindling salmon populations in California's second-largest river. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 4, 2020, photo, Chook-Chook Hillman, a member of the Karuk tribe, sits along the banks of the Klamath River in Orleans, Calif. Hillman works to restore native salmon populations as part of his job with the Karuk's fisheries program and is fighting to remove four dams on the lower Klamath River to benefit dwindling numbers of salmon that are critical to the tribe's culture and diet. A plan to demolish the dams on California's second-largest river has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 3, 2020, photo, a dam on the lower Klamath River known as Copco 2 is seen near Hornbrook, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and would include the Copco 2 facility pictured. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 5, 2020, Georgiana Gensaw, a member of the Yurok Indian tribe, displays a tattoo of a fish hawk clutching a salmon in its talons that she had inked on her right bicep to honor her son, whose middle name is Ker-neet, the Yurok word for fish hawk, in Klamath, Calif. Gensaw, who lives where the Klamath River reaches the Pacific Ocean in Klamath. A plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. Numerous tribes in southern Oregon and northern California, including the Yurok, are pushing for the dams' removal to save dwindling salmon populations in California's second-largest river. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 3, 2020, photo, Barbara Austin, a homeowner who lives along the edge of the reservoir created by the Copco 1 Dam, walks along the shore at sunset near Copco, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and would drain the reservoir. Residents who live on its shores are fighting the plan. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 5, 2020, photo, Georgiana Gensaw, a member of the Yurok tribe, pauses to reflect as she walks along Blue Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River that has special tribal significance and is also key to the survival of salmon, near Klamath, Calif. A plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. Numerous tribes in southern Oregon and northern California, including the Yurok, are pushing for the dams' removal to save dwindling salmon populations in California's second-largest river. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this March 2, 2020, hoto, farmer Ben DuVal; his wife, Erika, and their daughters, Hannah, 12, in purple, and Helena, 10, in gray, stand near a canal for collecting run-off water near their property in Tulelake, Calif. Ben DuVal inherited the farm from his grandfather, a World War II veteran who won the land by lottery, and worries that plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River could set a precedent for dam removal that could eventually threaten his livelihood. The proposal to remove the dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

In this photo taken March 3, 2020, the Klamath River is seen flowing across northern California from atop Cade Mountain in the Klamath National Forest. A plan to demolish four dams on California's second-largest river to benefit threatened salmon has sharpened a decades-old dispute over who has the biggest claim to the river's life-giving waters. The project, if it goes forward, would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history and reopen 400 stream miles of potential salmon habitat that's been blocked off for more than a century. Numerous tribes in southern Oregon and northern California are pushing for the dams' removal to save dwindling salmon populations in California's second-largest river. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

KLAMATH, Calif. (AP) — California's second-largest river has sustained Native American tribes with plentiful salmon for millennia, provided upstream farmers with irrigation water for generations and served as a haven for retirees who built dream homes along its banks.

With so many demands, the Klamath River has come to symbolize a larger struggle over the American West's increasingly precious water resources, and who has claim to them.

Now, plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath's lower reaches — the largest such demolition project in U.S. history — have placed those competing interests in stark relief. Tribes, farmers, homeowners and conservationists all have a stake in the dams' fate.

“We are saving salmon country, and we’re doing it through reclaiming the West," said Amy Cordalis, a Yurok tribal attorney fighting for dam removal.

The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs, and could revive plummeting salmon populations by reopening habitat that has been blocked for more than a century.

The proposal fits into a trend in the U.S. toward dam demolition as these infrastructure projects age and become less economically viable. More than 1,700 dams have been dismantled nationwide since 2012.

Backers of the Klamath Dam removal say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could vote this spring on whether to transfer the dams' hydroelectric licenses from the current operator, PacifiCorp, to a nonprofit formed to oversee the demolition. Drawdown of the reservoirs behind the dams could begin as early as 2022, according the nonprofit, the Klamath River Renewal Corp.

Opponents, including a group of residents who live around a reservoir, say without the dams, their waterfront properties will become mudflats and their homes will lose value.

“If we get halfway through and they blow a hole in the dam just to let the water out — to say, ‘Yeah, we done this’ — they can walk away from it. And we have no recourse whatsoever,” said Herman Spannus, whose great-grandfather first ran a ranch in the area in 1856.

The structures at the center of the debate are the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far northern California beginning in 1918. They were built for power generation, and none has "fish ladders," concrete chutes fish can pass through.

Two dams to the north are not targeted for demolition. They have fish passage and are part of a massive irrigation system that straddles the Oregon-California border and provides water to more than 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) of crops.

Those farmers won't be directly affected but worry the demolition will set a precedent.

"Dam removal on this scale is kind of unprecedented,” said Ben DuVal, who farms 300 acres (121 hectares). “I don’t want to be the one who ends up giving up my livelihood in order to fix a problem down there that was caused by a big experiment.”

The demolition plan is good business for PacifiCorp, which holds the dams' hydroelectric licenses. They're expired, and renewing them would require more than $400 million in federally mandated modifications.

Under under the demolition plan, $200 million will come from California and Oregon ratepayers, and $250 million will come from a voter-approved California water bond, with no liability for PacifiCorp.

For the region's tribes, the push to remove the dams is much more than financial calculus.

“I actually credit a lot of our men and women's depression to the fact that they fish for days and days and days and days and don't catch anything,” said Georgiana Gensaw, who is Yurok and lives on the reservation. “We want to bring salmon home."

Coho salmon from the Klamath River are listed as threatened under federal and California law, and their population in the river has fallen anywhere from 52% to 95%. Spring chinook, once the Klamath Basin's largest run, has dwindled by 98%.

Fall chinook have been so meager in the past few years that the Yurok canceled fishing for the first time in the tribe's memory. In 2017, they bought fish at a grocery store for their annual salmon festival.

Yet even demolition advocates say dam removal won't be enough on its own. Salmon face deteriorating ocean conditions due to climate change, and the many tributaries that feed into the Klamath River are degraded.

For their part, homeowners around the biggest reservoir, Copco Lake, feel a strong sense of place in the houses they built decades ago, with no idea the dams could ever come down.

“The real estate people are not anxious to take listings here because it's the rumors there all the time,” said Tom Rickard, who had to take his home off the market last summer when it didn't sell.

“You hear people from Los Angeles, the Bay Area, all over the place, and they keep asking, 'Well, what's going to happen to the dams?'”